tivals. You will find among the
ordinances of the Long Parliament a law providing that, in exchange for
the days of rest and amusement which the people had been used to enjoy
at Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas, the second Tuesday in every month
should be given to the working man, and that any apprentice who was
forced to work on the second Tuesday of any month might have his master
up before a magistrate. The French Jacobins decreed that the Sunday
should no longer be a day of rest; but they instituted another day of
rest, the Decade. They swept away the holidays of the Roman Catholic
Church; but they instituted another set of holidays, the Sansculottides,
one sacred to Genius, one to Industry, one to Opinion, and so on. I say,
therefore, that the practice of limiting by law the time of the labour
of adults is so far from being, as some gentlemen seem to think, an
unheard of and monstrous practice, that it is a practice as universal as
cookery, as the wearing of clothes, as the use of domestic animals.

And has this practice been proved by experience to be pernicious? Let us
take the instance with which we are most familiar. Let us inquire what
has been the effect of those laws which, in our own country, limit the
labour of adults to six days in every seven. It is quite unnecessary to
discuss the question whether Christians be or be not bound by a divine
command to observe the Sunday. For it is evident that, whether our
weekly holiday be of divine or of human institution, the effect on the
temporal interests of Society will be exactly the same. Now, is there a
single argument in the whole Speech of my honourable friend the Member
for Sheffield which does not tell just as strongly against the laws
which enjoin the observance of the Sunday as against the bill on our
table? Surely, if his reasoning is good for hours, it must be equally
good for days.

He says, "If this limitation be good for the working people, rely on it
that they will find it out, and that they will themselves establish it
without any law." Why not reason in the same way about the Sunday? Why
not say, "If it be a good thing for the people of London to shut their
shops one day in seven, they will find it out, and will shut their shops
without a law?" Sir, the answer is obvious. I have no doubt that, if
you were to poll the shopkeepers of London, you would find an immense
majority, probably a hundred to one, in favour of closing shops on the
Sunday; an